ACC announces five bowl tie-ins

Fresh on the heels of the SEC and Big Ten and others announcing future bowl tie-ins, the ACC has announced its own postseason agenda for the foreseeable future.

That conference confirmed Wednesday that it has partnered with the following games: the Military Bowl; the AdvoCare V100 Bowl; the new bowl game in Detroit, Mich., hosted by the Detroit Lions; Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl; and the Birmingham (Ala.) Bowl formerly sponsored by BBVA Compass. The latter two bowls are conditional tie-ins, and will only feature an ACC team when those games are scheduled to be played after Christmas: From the release:

The ACC will provide a team to the Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl after the 2014 and 2016 seasons and will serve as the Bowl’s first conditional choice in the other four years if either of its primary partners are not able to provide a team. The Birmingham Bowl will be a second conditional bowl for the ACC, if it has an available team beyond the Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl choice. The ACC is the first conditional choice of the Birmingham Bowl, should either of that bowl’s primary partners not have an eligible team.

The agreements with the five bowls will run from 2014 through the 2019 season.

“It’s very satisfying to finalize our future ACC bowl partnerships that collectively provide great flexibility, matchups and depth for our 15 member schools,” said ACC commissioner John Swofford in a statement. “We are pleased to continue our relationship with the Military and AdvoCare V100 Bowls while beginning new ones with the new bowl game in Detroit, hosted by the Detroit Lions; the Beef ‘O’Brady’s bowl game and Birmingham.”

The announcement gives the ACC a tie-in, on some level, to 14 different bowl games. The conference stated that it will have a minimum of nine guaranteed bowl berths in each of the six years after the 2014-19 seasons, with that number expanding to 10 in the 2014 and 2016 seasons.